I am a scholar in the cultural analysis of science and media. My work combines STS-approaches, media philosophy and historical epistemology. Additionally, I am an initiator of cultural programs focused on exchanges between artists and scientists. My interdisciplinary research and cultural programs explore how scientific concepts (historically) develop and circulate between different disciplinary domains and social spaces. My first monograph “Brainmedia: One Hundred Years of Performing Live Brains, 1920-2020,” was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2022. In this book I examine past and present ways in which scientists, science educators, and artists use new media to conceptualize, examine and demonstrate the “brain at work” (see link).
I am an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University and a researcher in the STS research group (MUSTS). My current research projects are focused on the history of Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Decision making (as part of an NWO-funded project titled “RAIDIO” 2020-2024) and practices of data ethics and data governance in new healthcare infrastructures (as part of an EU-funded project titled “STRONG-AYA” 2022-2017).
Between 2020 -2022 I was also a program developer and tutor for the (new) MA program “F for Fact,” at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, a program in which eleven artists work in the borderlands between fact and fiction. In 2020, I was a UM-researcher for the Brightlands Institute for Smart Society (BISS), which focuses on ‘Responsible and effective data-driven decision-making for the digital society’. I continue to teach data ethics workshops to professionals, including employees of APG, the Belastingdienst, TNO, CBS and Dutch municipalities. In 2019, I was an affiliated researcher at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, TU Berlin, working among other things on a special issue in Frontiers about new critical approaches to sex/gender neuroscience. At the University of Amsterdam (starting in 2012), I co-initiated the interdisciplinary “Neurocultures” research group for research at the crossroads of the humanities, social sciences and neurosciences. In 2020 I defended my PhD-dissertation at the University of Amsterdam (winner of the ASCA Best Dissertation award).
Previously, I was a visiting fellow at the Visual and Environmental Studies department of Harvard University and a visiting student at the graduate program of the History of Art department at the University of Berkeley, California. Between 2017 and 2019, I was the first program coordinator of the Amsterdam Research Institute of the Arts and Sciences (ARIAS), a platform that fosters collaborative research by artists and academic researchers. I have worked as a curator, researcher, teacher and organizer for several cultural institutions, including the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague), BAK, Basis voor Actuele Kunst (Utrecht), and If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution (Amsterdam).
Bio Dr. Flora Lysen, November 2022
photo: Alena Schmick